Society brings women's studies major to forefront

Ashley Fuller began her career at the University of Georgia as a biology major - until she learned that UGA offers a women's studies degree.

"I didn't even know they had women's studies ... but as soon as I found it, I fell in love with it," said the senior, who now will graduate with a major in women's studies and a minor in religion.

But when Fuller parades the graduation ceremony catwalk, she also will sport proof of her membership in UGA's newly minted chapter of the national women's studies honor society, Iota Iota Iota.

Nicknamed Triota, the honor society is designed to promote and enrich feminist scholarship among students are interested in women's and gender studies. Student leaders of the UGA Women's Studies Student Organization, or WSSO, said they wanted an organization that focused more on scholarship and academics than the more social activist student organization. So WSSO co-presidents Shelley Chinnan and Lucas Franklin established the Triota chapter at UGA this fall as an off-shoot of the student organization.

UGA's Institute for Women's Studies has been around since 1977 but has only offered an undergraduate major since 1998, said the institute's director, Chris Cuomo.

The honor society chapter at UGA puts women's studies and feminism on the map, mostly among the student body, as a legitimate academic discipline, she said.

"It's not about creating an exclusive community. ... We are a welcoming place," Cuomo said.

In the past two years, the number of undergraduate majors has increased from about 30 to 50 - numbers that now are high enough to form a base of students to support both the honor society and the student organization as a whole, said Blaise Parker, a UGA graduate and the institute's assistant director.

WSSO existed when Parker started her graduate degree at UGA but lacked a sense of community, "not like what it is now. ... It didn't have the numbers or the vibrance that it has now," she said. "There are new faces and a lot more younger people getting involved."

Chinnan and Franklin began recruiting other students last year to start the Triota chapter but only this semester did they drum up enough support, Chinnan said.

The honor society will begin its work by forming reading groups to discuss feminism as it relates to areas like ecology, Marxism and multiculturalism, race and class - but might eventually use the society as a forum to share women's studies and feminist scholarship to the rest of campus, she said.

Women's and gender studies issues affect everybody, whether they realize it or not, and a women's studies honor society on campus demonstrates the validity of feminist scholarship to the rest of the student body, Fuller said.

"As a women's studies major, we have a responsibility to educate others but we have to have the tools and the strength to do that," she said.